"He was the most dangerous man in Ireland, sure he pulled a gun on two of his family and threatened to blow them away when he was 19-years-old." That's how one associate of "Mad Nicky" described him. No one was surprised he was shot. He had told friends he was expecting to be hit and, if the rumours and claims are to be believed, he had inside knowledge on a number of other violent deaths.
Why he was killed on Saturday night is not yet clear. The protection racket he ran was doing well but had made him a suspect for possible involvement in the murder of local publican Stephen Connolly last month.
Detectives suspect O'Hare may have had Connolly shot by a professional hitman as a warning to others who refused to hand over £600 pounds a week.
According to senior gardai, the criminal gang suspected of being involved in the protection scam have links to the splinter Republican group the INLA and O'Hare had served a sentence for firearms offences in the INLA wing of Portlaoise jail.
In 1989 he was convicted by the Special Criminal Court of possessing a sawn off shotgun. After his release he attempted to extort £48,000 from the owner of an amusement arcade in Dublin. Charged with that offence and released on bail, he and two accomplices broke into his father's house where he attacked his fath er, claiming Nicholas O'Hare snr owed him £4,000 for redecorating the house. He broke a chair over his father and kicked him repeatedly, leaving him unconscious.
He was sentenced to four years on the extortion charge and a consecutive three year sentence was passed for the burglary at his father's home.
Recently O'Hare was seen in the company of dissident republicans. The night a number of dissidents attempted to set fire to a detective Garda's family home in Dundalk last month, O'Hare sat in a car with the culprits waiting for the flames to catch.
Yesterday there was also speculation that he may have angered members of the Republican family by holding up post offices just North of the Border.
Whatever it was, the two gunmen who went up to him with semi-automatic pistols made sure he wouldn't be around to find out why. At least 11 shots were fired at him, seven hit him in the upper body, one in the eye.